1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an ink sheet cartridge for use in a thermal transfer recording method, and to a recording apparatus capable of mounting the ink sheet cartridge.
2. Description of the Related Art
A thermal transfer printer generally uses an ink sheet made by coating thermofusible (or thermosublimable or the like) ink on a base film, and records an image by using a thermal print head to selectively heat the ink sheet in accordance with image signals thereby transferring fused (or sublimated or the like) ink to the recording paper. Ink sheets used in such a thermal transfer printer crease easily because they are in general very thin, and it is difficult to mount the ink sheet on the main body of a printer without producing creases. Therefore it takes extra time to mount the ink sheet. In order to solve this problem, a method has been proposed in which such an ink sheet is housed within a cartridge, and the entire cartridge is mounted on or exchanged from the main body of an apparatus.
Such an ink sheet is of a type in which ink is completely transferred to the recording paper in a single recording operation (a so-called one-time ink sheet), Accordingly, after the completion of recording of one character or one line, it is necessary to move the ink sheet by a length corresponding to the length of the recording and to securely bring the unused portion of the ink sheet to a position for use in subsequent recording. Hence, the amount of ink sheet used increases, and the operating cost for a thermal transfer printer with one-time ink sheets becomes higher than that for a multiple use ink sheet thermal printer in which recording is performed on thermo-sensitive paper. As an ink sheet for thermal transfer recording for solving such a problem, an ink sheet (a so-called multiprint ink sheet) has been known which can record images a plurality of times. By using a multiprint ink sheets when recording n times a recording length L, recording can be performed calculating the length of the ink sheet to be moved after the completion of each recording or during recording smaller (L/n: n&gt;1) than the length L. The efficiency of use of the ink sheet thereby becomes n times that in conventional cases, and hence reduction in the running cost of a thermal transfer printer can be expected. Such a recording method will be hereinafter termed "multiprint".
For such an ink sheet for multiprint, an ink sheet cartridge (hereinafter simply termed a "cartridge") housing the ink sheet may also be mounted on a thermal transfer printer to perform recording, as in the case of using a conventional one-time ink sheet. However, a cartridge housing an ink sheet capable of performing 3-times multiprint can only be used efficiently in a thermal transfer printer capable of 3-times multiprint. Thus, for example, if a cartridge housing an ink sheet capable of performing 10-times multiprint is used with the above-described thermal transfer printer which is capable only of performing 3-times multiprint, the 10-times multiprint ink sheet functions only as a 3-times multiprint ink sheet, since the printer is for 3-times multiprint and the moving length of the ink sheet relative to the moving length of recording paper is set to 1/3.